


Words

by Sixthlight



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Language Barrier, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Book: Lies Sleeping, Spoilers for Lies Sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 10:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17262695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: “What are you doing?” Foxglove asked, four days after she had come to the Folly.





	Words

“What are you doing?” Foxglove asked, four days after she had come to the Folly. Molly was in the pantry making the week’s shopping list; these days she ordered online, but there was half a century of habit behind it, and she still made the list by hand. It was satisfying somehow to see things appear orderly on the page: potatoes, eggs, yams.

“We need food,” Molly said. It was hard for both of them to speak. English didn’t sit well on their tongues, and it had been longer than Molly cared to remember since she had spoken her own language to one of her own people. Foxglove had had their sisters with her, until so recently. Molly had had nobody.

“You are writing,” Foxglove said, miming the action. Molly might not have understood her otherwise. There hadn’t been writing, when she had been a child. She wasn’t sure if Foxglove was using a word for it she hadn’t known then, or whether Foxglove and the others had created one of their own, over the years.

“Yes,” said Molly.

“Who taught you?” Foxglove asked, leaning over her shoulder and frowning at Molly’s looping script.

“There used to be many other people serving here, when there were many wizards here, not just two,” Molly said. “Other people from this land, of course. They cleaned and cooked and -” she mimed typing; Foxglove nodded. “Some of the women from the _typing pool_ ,” she used the English words and didn’t care how they sounded, since it was Foxglove, “taught me, when I was a little girl and had just come to this house. They said everybody should know how to – to write, because words have power. They were right.” She wrote down _flour_ , because they were down to one five-kilogram bag, and that would go very quickly now she was serving meals for five or ten or fifteen every day, not two. “I have a – a device I can talk to people on.” She mimed her tablet, and using it. “I will tell Peter you need one, too. He will like that. He likes devices.”

“Don’t bother,” Foxglove said. “I can’t write. Or read.” She shrugged. “Nobody who knew me thought it was important.” She brightened. “But would Peter get me some more -” Molly wasn’t sure of the term; Foxglove mimed painting, and Molly nodded. _Art supplies_. “They gave me all my brushes, but I will run out of-“ Molly remembered the word she used as _colours_ , but she thought she meant _paint._

“Yes, of course, or I can help you buy some,” Molly said. She thought about all the things Foxglove had told her, about the last century, about where she and their sisters had been, about the people who had not been kind. “Nobody thought it was important that you could write? Or understand writing?”

“Not for any of the things they wanted me to do,” Foxglove said, shrugging again, and looking down.

Molly bared her teeth, then closed her lips tightly. She did not want Foxglove to think she was angry with her.

“I must finish this list,” she said. “And then there is time before lunch, and I am going to teach you.”

“Teach me what?”

“To write,” Molly said. “You are in the home of wizards, and the women who taught me were right. Words are power.”  

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Words](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17978426) by [sisi_rambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisi_rambles/pseuds/sisi_rambles)




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